Eric Isenburger

German, 1902–1994

Eric Isenburger was born in 1902 in Frankfurt on Main. He studied at the Frankfurt Art School. He met Jula Elenbogen and they married in 1927. A year later the young couple moved to Vienna, where a period of intense artistic work in painting and dance began. In 1931 Eric and Jula decided to move to Berlin, which was still at this time an important center of contemporary art. Eric Isenburger very successfully exhibited in Berlin.

However, several articles appeared in the National Socialist press attacking the work of the painter and in 1933 Eric and Jula Isenburger left Berlin in a hurry, heeding the advice of Erics gallerist Wolfgang Gurlitt that they "should take a short vacation" abroad. Their exile led the couple via Paris and Stockholm to Nice. There in southern France, Eric Isenburger was imprisoned as a German national along with other emigrés in an internment camp for several months. With the support of the Thomas Mann committee and under dangerous circumstances the couple managed to leave Europe in 1941.

He became an Academician of the National Academy of Design and taught painting there for many years. In 1994 Eric Isenburger died in New York. In 1999 the first large scale exhibition of his works in Europe after World War Two took place in the gallery of the city of Neuburg on the Danube. Both the exhibition and catalogue were the result of close cooperation with Jula Isenburger. It was during the Neuburg exhibition that the idea of forming a society had its starting point. In April 2000 Jula Isenburger died at the age of 92 in New York. In November 2000 the Eric and Jula Isenburger Society was founded in Neuburg on the Danube. Isenburger's art is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art; Corcoran Gallery of Art; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art; De Young Mem Museum, San Francisco; John Herron Art Institute, Indianapolis; IBM; Encyclopedia Britannica Collection.